


Dreaming in Color

by seimaisin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dreams, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-12
Updated: 2007-07-12
Packaged: 2017-10-18 16:06:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/190646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seimaisin/pseuds/seimaisin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winchester brothers are both having strange dreams. Coincidence or something supernatural?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreaming in Color

**Author's Note:**

> Title stolen from the Black Lab song of the same name.

Dean knew he was dreaming the moment the giant purple rat showed up. Somehow, that didn’t stop him – or, more accurately, his dream self – from shrieking like a little girl and running in the opposite direction.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t have nightmares. He did, constantly; one popular one involved wandering around a maze of rooms, calling out for Sam. He knew Sam was there, just beyond one door or another, but each turn showed an empty room. He could hear Sam screaming, calling his name, but he never found him. That nightmare always ended with his eyelids plastered open, staring at the thankfully-occupied bed next to him for the rest of the night. There was also one that involved his mother, a large knife, and an accident he could never prevent – that one required alcohol. Lots of alcohol. Yes, Dean dreamed bad things. However, technicolor rodents had never figured before.

With the rat in hot pursuit, Dean ran around a corner and found himself in a dark alley. Not quite dark, actually – bathed in a red light that illuminated paper trash on the ground all around him, and a large smear of what looked like whipped cream on a brick wall. Dean felt himself shudder with revulsion, and wondered why. Certainly, his rational mind told him, the mess wasn’t as bad as the nasty mess in the pizza box he’d thrown on the floor at the foot of his bed before going to sleep. But, in the dream, Dean tiptoed his way gingerly through the paper on the floor, suppressing the urge to vomit. His heart raced. Somehow, he knew that if he made it to the large glass door at the other end of the alley – inside which he could see something that looked like a wedding party in full swing – he’d be safe. Clean and alive and safe. No running, though, because the mess would contaminate him. With what, he didn’t know … he just knew it was important. Very important.

Halfway there. Three-quarters of the way. He continued to make his way slowly, praying that the rat wouldn’t find him first. Finally, only one more row of trash stood between him and the glass door. Inside the door, a man in a tux held up a champagne glass in his direction. Almost there. One more step …

… the rat nudged him in the back with its nose, causing Dean to fall into the trash. Down, down, father than the ground, the rat falling on top of him, fur dripping with slime and teeth bared …

Dean woke up with his heart pounding and bile rising in his throat. When he noticed the pizza box at the end of the bed, he resisted the urge to get up and toss it out the door into the pool below.

What the hell was that, anyway?

***

“Dude, you look like hell.”

“Shut up.” It was an automatic response. “Slept like shit last night. I think we got some bad cheese on that pizza, man.”

Sam shrugged. “I didn’t feel anything.” He tapped a couple of keys on the computer, then nodded. “Okay, finally found the wireless connection. We’re good to go. What’s first on the list?”

Dean made no move to sit up. From his prone position on the bed, he tossed a wadded-up piece of paper into the air. “Why are we doing this again? It’s pointless, the woman’s a fruitcake.”

“We don’t know that. You said it yourself, the EMF went crazy when you pointed it at her … collection.”

“Collection,” Dean snorted. What the 82-year-old woman had shown them was seven shelves full of absolute junk. “I’m a yard-sale scavenger,” she’d told them proudly. “I shop the whole town, every Wednesday and Saturday morning, for the last 33 years. I own the best of everyone’s trash!” “Trash” was about the most accurate word she’d used the entire morning they’d spent with her, Dean figured. She owned the entire collection of John Wayne collector plates, a plastic reproduction of Michelangelo’s David wearing a tiny gold speedo, and an entire shelf of those creepy big-eyed kid statuettes that always made Dean wonder if they were signs of the impending demon invasion of earth. “Did we end up with the miniature replica of the General Lee? Because that one was kinda cool.”

“She gave us everything,” Sam reminded him. Twelve boxes worth of everything, in fact, twelve boxes that were now littering the floor of their hotel room. Sam eyed the box sitting on the floor next to Dean. “Are you going to open that? The sooner we start sorting this, the sooner we can figure out if she does have something haunted, and the sooner we can give it all back to her.”

“What, you don’t want any of it? I totally thought you’d be an American Girl sort of guy.”

Sam didn’t even favor him with a glance. “We can rule out the doll, actually, I checked that last night. The EMF didn’t even buzz, and I couldn’t find anything online that accused American Girl being anything more sinister than a consumerist cult for six-year-olds. Not our brand of scary.”

Dean sat up, sighing, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Hey, you didn’t happen to see a purple rat anywhere in these boxes, did you?”

“A what?”

“Never mind.”

***

Sam was being buried alive. At first, he thought he was having another one of his vision dreams – god, how would they find someplace when all he could see was dirt, anyway? – but, then he realized that, if it was a vision, he wouldn’t be thinking about it being a vision. Confusing as it was, the fact that he realized he was dreaming meant it was just a normal old dream. Probably.

The fact that the dirt covering his box was bright blue was also a clue.

Sam looked around. He had a remarkable amount of space to move, for being buried alive. The box he was stretched out in was large, wide enough for him to stretch out his arms and still not touch the side. In fact, he wasn’t quite sure where the sides of the box were … or, now that he thought about it, where the top of the box was. Or how he was sure he was being buried alive at all. All he could see was blue – blue above him, blue off to the side, blue underneath him, if he moved his head. He really didn’t seem to be closed in at all. Yet, every time he tried to take a breath, he felt a panic attack forming in his chest.

He reached up, and sure enough, he didn’t touch any ceiling. He made a move to sit up, but the panic welling in his chest threatened to choke him, and he couldn’t make his arms push himself to a sitting position. He was going to suffocate, some instinct told him, if he sat up he’d make the blue dirt fall and he’d be buried for sure and then he’d die. If he sat still, his body insisted, if he laid there and didn’t make any movements at all, the blue dirt would stay where it was. He’d be able to breathe. He’d be safe.

After a few moments – a lifetime, in the strange way of dream time – Sam felt hard grains hitting his face. The dirt was falling. A small trickle, sure, but tiny grains pelted his neck, his forehead, his cheeks, dribbling into his mouth. Sweet. The dirt was … sweet? Like sugar, actually, he thought as the trickle became a steadier fall. Like candy – like that candy you bought at the gas station, the stuff that came with white candy sticks you licked and dipped into the neon colored sugar. He was being buried alive by neon colored sugar?

He brought his arm up to his eyes to wipe a layer of blue sugar out of his vision. What he saw when he blinked was simply a sea of blue. His ears, however, caught a rumble in the distance, somewhere above him. Sounded like an earthquake. Felt like … oh, shit.

Avalanche.

When Sam found himself sitting straight up in bed, he could still taste sugar in the back of his throat.

***

“If the yawns are supposed to be a hint, forget it. I’m not going to Starbucks for your ass.”

Sam blinked. The computer’s clock told him he’d been staring blankly at the screen for two minutes. “Sorry. Just … zoned out, I guess.”

Sam glanced over at the beds, but couldn’t see his brother on the floor at the far end of the room. He figured Dean was busy digging through another box of Mrs. Viray’s supposedly haunted collectables. “Dude,” Dean’s voice came, muffled, from near the floor, “my money is totally on the cow dressed as a can-can girl.”

“No way.” A moment later, a dark item flew over the bed directly at Sam’s head. He ducked, and it clattered against the wall behind him. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Death by flying bovine drag queen. Has a certain ring to it.” Dean’s head appeared as Sam picked the figurine up from the floor. “Check that thing out. It has to be possessed.”

Sam chucked it back at his brother, and had the satisfaction of clipping Dean’s ass as he hauled himself back on the bed. “Sleep with it under your pillow,” Sam advised, “and see if it comes after you. If you wake up singing “I Love Paris”, then we’ll know what the problem is.”

“For a straight guy, you have a disturbing knowledge of show tunes.”

“How do you even know that’s a show tune, I wonder?”

Dean flopped back on the bed, ignoring him. “I think we should put all of this crap in a big box and torch it. Problem solved, and the world would be better off. Do you know what I just spotted at the bottom of that box? A whole pile of naked fake Barbies. They were STARING at me.”

Sam rolled his eyes, but was distracted from a retort by a nasty white scrape on the side of Dean’s arm. “What happened to you there?”

“Statue of Liberty paperweight.”

He nodded sympathetically. “Those are killer.”

 

Just after midnight, they found the … thing.

“What the hell is that?”

“An aardvark?” Dean suggested.

Sam shook his head. “That nose looks more like an elephant trunk. On a rat.”

“A bright green trunk. And pink paws. Do elephants have cat paws? Or rats?”

“It’s … so ugly.” Sam sounded almost reverent. “And we’ve seen some ugly in these boxes.”

Dean turned the creature over in his hand. “Ugly and heavy. Damn. It’s made of some sort of metal.”

“Hey, holding the body like that is turning your hand orange.”

Dean dropped the statue on the bed and wiped his hand on his jeans. “This our culprit, then?”

“It’s entirely possible. A statue of something that combines multiple animals? Sounds like a mythological creature to me.”

“One that survived the seventies,” Dean added, nodding solemnly. “Or a kindergarten class.”

A total of four search strings in Google told Sam the answer. “It’s a baku – a Japanese eater of dreams. Trunk of an elephant, paws of a tiger, body of a bear, tail of an ox. According to Japanese folk tales, it’s actually a good figure. A person having a nightmare could wake up and have Baku devour their dream by asking three times. It’s supposed to be a powerful ward against evil, actually – some people paint its kanji symbol on their pillows to keep bad spirits away while they sleep.”

“Dreams, huh?” Dean said, eyeing the statue. It stood on the table behind Sam’s computer, formerly blank eyes painted periwinkle blue, with black eyelashes. It stared back at Dean. He shuddered.

“You too?”

Dean shuddered again. “Okay. How do we kill it, then?”

“It’s not evil, Dean, I don’t think we kill it.”

“It’s attacking us!”

“We’re having bad dreams. That’s not an attack.”

“It’s fucking with us.”

“Do we kill everything that fucks with us?”

“No. But only because the FBI doesn’t need any more excuses.”

Sam ignored him and turned his attention back to the computer. Dean occupied himself by engaging in a staring contest with the baku.

The baku won every time.

***

At 5:00am, Dean and Sam sat in a mostly empty dining room at IHOP. Sam stared blankly into his coffee cup. Dean’s forehead rested on the table in front of him. He muttered something into the table. “What?” Sam asked.

Dean’s head raised a half inch. “Pink spiders. There were pink spiders.”

“I drowned in a sea of Orange Crush. I don’t think I ever want to see another can of orange soda again.”

Sam continued to stare into his coffee cup. Dean raised his head only when the ancient waitress brought their omelets. “Did the old woman mention anything about dreams?” Dean asked finally, after downing half of the plate.

“She just said she was afraid to go to sleep. We didn’t ask why.”

“Well, we suck.” Dean ran a hand over his face. “Okay. So, this thing is supposed to be a good guy, right? It eats a person’s bad dreams?”

“Yes. According to legend, if it’s ever harmful, it’s because it eats too many dreams, causing a person to lose sleep. I couldn’t find anything that said it ever actually caused someone to have nightmares.”

“Hmmm.” They had both finished their food by the time Dean spoke again. “Hey … aren’t we supposed to dream in black & white?”

“Nope, that’s a myth. I had a psychology class one time … the professor said that we all dream in color, for the most part, but we generally only remember the important symbols in a dream, not the background details. Color is almost always a background detail.”

“Then why do I remember being chased by purple rats and pink spiders? And,” he added, as the corner of Sam’s mouth quirked, “if you say anything about repressed femininity, I’m going to stab you in the eye with my fork.”

Sam let his grin slip out, but ultimately chose another gulp of coffee over the easy insult. “The colors are weird,” he agreed.

Dean nodded slowly, but then sat up quickly enough that he knocked his plate off the table and into the path of the waitress as she passed. She stumbled, and Sam was left to apologize to her as Dean slid out of the booth between them, tossing a $20 bill on the table. “Dean? Where are you going?”

Dean turned around and jingled his car keys. “Hardware store.”

“What? Why?”

In response, Dean just shrugged. “Even dream eaters need a little bit of dignity.”

***

Sam groaned as they walked down the front stairs. Next to them, a family of three lawn gnomes watched over a rock garden, while a pink plastic flamingo decorated the patch of lawn next to the Impala. “We really need to find a laundromat. Everything in my bag now smells like turpentine.”

“Think she’ll notice that the baku no longer looks like her grandchild’s art project?”

“Not unless she looks behind the neon parrot sign.” When Dean looked sideways at him, Sam grinned. “Come on, you didn’t actually think I helped her put everything back on the shelves because I wanted to hear where the best yard sales in town are, right? That thing’s on the top shelf, where she’ll never reach.”

“Can’t ever be sure, Captain Eagle Scout.” Dean yawned. “At least it worked, though. A clean baku is a happy baku, I guess.”

“Seems like it. I didn’t have any dreams last night, anyway.”

“I did. Angelina Jolie and a box of Cuban cigars …”

“No more details, please.”

Dean grinned and patted the front pocket of his shirt. “Easiest $200 we ever made. Well, that we’ve ever made honestly, anyway.”

“Honestly? You told her the General Lee was possessed by a kitsune.”

“Shhhh.” As he got into the car, Dean casually tossed his leather jacket over the bright orange replica car in the back seat. “You think an 80-year-old woman can really appreciate one of the coolest cars in the history of the world?” As he drove away, his grin faded, and he poked Sam. “When we get back to the hotel, throw your nasty old pizza box away, will you? It makes the room stink.”

“Since when did you become the merry maid?”

When Dean blinked, he saw purple fur in the darkness, just beyond his sight. He shivered, and stepped on the gas. “Never mind, just … okay, forget it.”


End file.
